Findings… :D

Author: woorishin

We had an ‘imaginative journey’ which was based on an anonymous pieces of music. We listened to five tunes in the session very silently. This activity was interpreting about music in my own way after listening. The session 1 was about writing the story about music I heard. In the raining day, I am walking on street in the city, however there is no anyone on the street. I keep walking then I see the change of clouds movement in the sky. And suddenly after hearing the rumble of thunder, sun is coming and then I reach some beach of sea. The sea waves breaks and spread onto beach. I sit down on the beach and see the big boat on the sea. Seagulls fry away and during walking continuously, I reached cliffs which is really high. I look down under the cliff and find an isolated house. There is one is fishing, so I walk down to that place. Suddenly he disappeared and no one there. Session 2 was imagining the name of tune that I heard. I named it as ocean. Session 3 was drawing the singer that I heard. I drew one old guitarist. Session 4 was following the instruction on my oblique strategies card. And my card was ‘take a break’, so I followed it by listening music. Session 5 was writing down the sounds I heard. In this part, I wrote silence and peers’ coughing and laughing sound. Cone (1974) states that ‘musical understanding’ means the ability to receive full message of music, and it is relevant with the listener’s experiences. Besides, ‘understanding of music’ composes the listener’s imagination.

We are asked to create a sound map around LCC in Elephant & Castle by considering different sound categorisation. There are soundscape vocabularies, which are important features of soundscape for the soundscape analyst. (Schafer, 1994) The Keynote sound is a sound that we could hear continuously as sound form of background against other sounds are heard. For example, the sounds of the internal combustion engine in the urban environment. Signal is a foregrounded sound that could be perceived to listen consciously. Signal sounds should be listened to since they compose acoustic warning devices that are sirens, car horns, bells and whistles. Soundmark is the terminology originated from landmark as a community sound that it would be distinctive or perceived by listeners in that community. (Schafer, 1994) In the university, from the starting point of entrance to typo café area, our group especially listened the signal sound of scaned student card barrier and keynote sound of machinery when gate barriers open. There is a soundmark of coffee machine sound in the café. And then we explored on the first floor from the tower building to library and canteen area. There is a soundmark of specificity in the canteen as if plates with spoons and forks make sounds. In the library, a keynote sound is produced from the printers.

South Korea and North Korea do not acknowledge each other as sovereign nations. Actually the two nations are still at war but ceasefire. There is the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that is a territory on the Korean peninsula demarcating North Korea and South Korea. The DMZ of 150 mile long includes region on both sides of the truce line approximately following the 38th parallel. It has existed since the Korean War (1950-53) is ended. A demarcation between the two nations is excessively fortified. They keep tension sharply as a blade throughout the peninsula and especially along the DMZ. (History, 2010)

In recent years, South Korea switched on their enormous loudspeakers faced to border. In turn, North Korea responded to South Korea by switching back on their loudspeakers, claiming that they have tested a hydrogen bomb. Since the North was threatened by political noise from the South. They shouted at each other by using the speakers along the DMZ. Since the Korean War, the propaganda programming running on and off has become subtle. The south started again using loudspeakers as a part of psychological warfare against the North as purpose of propaganda. They intended to persuade North Korean Soldiers might become uncertain about their own regime or even defect because of political sound from the speakers. The playlist of this included a useful weather forecast, news from both Koreas, dramas, favourable discussion of democracy, capitalism and life in South Korea and mismanagement in the North. (Paterson, 2016) Especially, the speakers also play K-pop music, which is banned in the North. For example, bang bang bang, which is a song from Korean boy band Big Bang, is on the playlist and is used before in South Korea’s audio bombardment. This song reminded me a battle scene with pulsating rhythms, strong beat and energy as if the title of song. It might affect to destroy North Korean soldiers’ morale. Cultural and political programming including k-pop songs transmitted with massive power as political noise.

Many people live in the city, which is a place of diversities. The urban environment includes multiple sounds, smells and visions and it enables all our senses to be awakened. On the other hand, since we have been exposed by particular urban senses for a long time, we could not notice it has affected to people by negative aspects. Especially, the urban soundscape is one of the important issues in our life. I will focus on “urban sound” as “noise”. The difference between sound and noise might be explained that sound is actually what we hear and noise is unpleasant or dangerous sound without being noticed. Even though the noise could be subjective, it is fact that the noise is everywhere in the city.

During the sound and city session, we were asked to do activity that finds the 3 types of sound, which are Keynote sound, Signal and Soundmark, in university and creates a sound map of university. By taking this experience, I started to record the sounds that I have unconsciously heard and encountered during my daily commute and staying in my room. I considered making a synchronous noise recording in the urban environment as a sound artefact on the basis of my sonic experiences. At the beginning of my research, listening is focused as a way to know and understand the sounds in the environment. I recorded an idling diesel bus, running train along the railway, running cars on the street, traffic signals for pedestrians, an ambulance siren, dog barking against construction around my house and running washing machine. Basically, these recorded sounds are recognised as noise. It is insidious and acutely affects urban residents over a long period of time.

Low-frequency noise might become the most insidious. The sound of airplane taking off and an idling diesel truck or city bus have the frequencies of vibration than an audible sound. (Holt, 2016) We do not actually discuss about our daily low frequency noise or high frequency noise, however we might suffer from these. We might overlook these daily noises. I strongly believe that we should be more aware of the sounds in our environment and understand that sounds could play a significant role to our life. My sound artifact might help the listeners to recognise the noise pollution of city as obstacles to our involvement with the sonic world around us. Therefore, I researched the urban soundscape and how it affects our minds and bodies in terms of the environmental psychology in order to disseminate to many people.

I stated to research the endeavors against battle over sound as a domestic disturbance from the Victorian time. Frith (1891) states in her letter that “Rather, Frith, than continue to be tormented in this way, I would prefer to go to the grave where there is no noise”. At that time, Carlyle failed to maintain solid boundaries between home and outside. He decided to construct a silent room at the top of his house. (Picker, 1999) These occurred “unwanted, unmusical and loud sound” in unintended listening mean “noise” commonly. (Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, 1994) Noise is generally used to loudness, and noise pollution refers to negative aspects of sound that might result in physiological and psychological illness, while Winkler (2000) points out that a quieter soundscape is a healthier soundscape and plays an important role for mind, body and our soul. Currently, the sound pollution in the urban environment is getting worse. Truax (1978) defined that sound pollution is an imbalance in a soundscape and takes place by disrupting or intruding sounds. It has a characteristic that the perceived balance of the soundscape is interrupted. Moreover, noise puts our sense of the social to test its limit. Sound might become utopian and dystopian combination. (Bull & Back, 2003) Music could also become not only wanted, intimate and comfortable sounds to listen but also unwanted, deafening and threatening noise to listen at the same time.

Firstly, in this lecture, I remember that we were asked what was happening in this photograph. I purely guessed that it might be some national air show because of the people’s facial expressions who are looking into the sky. This was a David Burnett‘s photograph which is after camping out for days, tourists look up into the sky as Apollo 11 rocketed into space.

(David Burnett/Contact Press Images)

In the summer of 1969, all eyes turned to a spit of land on Florida’s Atlantic coast—the site of the Kennedy Space Center, named for the president who had challenged the nation to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. That July, the Apollo 11 mission would attempt just that.

Before 130 years from when Burnett’s picture was taken, View from the Window at Le Gras (1826) is the oldest surviving camera photograph which is created by Nicéphore Niépce in France. This shows like part of castle and actually these are the buildings and surrounding countryside of his estate, Le Gras, from a high window. It is regarded to have commenced in 1839.

Enhanced version of Nicéphore Niépce’s View from the Window at Le Gras (1826), the earliest surviving photograph of a scene from nature taken with a camera obscura.

and I researched more details of the camera obscura.

The pinhole camera and camera obscura principle illustrated in 1925, in The Boy Scientist.

In 1838, Boulevard du Temple contains the earliest known candid photograph of a person which is taken by Louis Daguerre in Paris. In this picture, the moving traffic on the street does not appear for their images to be captured since it used the over ten-minute exposure time.

The lecture is skipped forward to the Victorian era, and Victorian portraits are showed us and the images looks bizarre since these include a hidden something covered with fabric. Their mother or someone disguised as chairs or camouflaged behind them.

During Victorian era, most of portraits elicited people’s stiff postures and unsmiling faces with controlled mouth because these are taken long exposure time. So, people needed to keep same gesture in order to be captured. However, the pictures of Victorian children included dead siblings for photographs as if they looked alive. This tradition of portraits was mementos for the deceased with family since the infant mortality rate was high. I thought that photographing was not easy things to get without social and financial condition so when their child was died, probably they might want to remain memorable photographs rather than photographing alive children.

The first selfie!!!!!

The earliest known photographic self-portrait was taken by Robert Cornelius who is an American pioneer in photography produced a daguerreotype by himself in 1839. Also this is one of the first photographs of a person. It was scratched in order to remove camera. The back reads, “The first light picture ever taken.”

This photograph is Danish prime minister Thorning-Schmidt’s selfie with President Obama and British prime minister Cameron featured on front pages around the world. While they looked delighted to be at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, the US first lady looked distinctly unimpressed in the background. Even though they were in the memorial service, ordinary selfies seem to make them lose all sense of decency.

We started this lecture about memory and line by looking at the cave paintings of not only ‘Chauvet’ in France and ‘El Castillo’ in Spain but also the abstract detail of a South African cave painting. We discussed the expecting meanings of the paintings, seeing the different caves and how these could interpret as art or communication. For instance, detail from a panel at ‘Chauvet’ might mean a pride of lions by hunting for prey or a important part of people’s life at that time as a message. The main theme of these cave paintings was related the use of lines to memories.

Paintings from Chauvet, France

Paintings from El Castillo, Spain

In a cave in northwestern Spain called El Castillo, ancient artists decorated a stretch of limestone wall with depictions of human hands. These seem to have made the images by pressing a hand to the wall and then blowing red pigment on it, creating like stencil. They decorated by using their hands on an animal painting like symbols as desire and the evidence of the cave paintings might indicate that recently people have inherited their capacity for symbolic thinking from their common ancestor, going back half a million years ago.

Making analogies, the associative

According to memory and line, we were known by this lecture about Tony Buzan. He is the inventor of mind mapping. The Mind Map is a powerful graphic technique which provides a universal key to unlock the potential of the brain. It harnesses the full range of cortical skills – word, image, number, logic, rhythm, colour and spatial awareness – in a single, uniquely powerful manner. In so doing, it gives you the freedom to roam the infinite expanses of your brain. The Mind Map can be applied to every aspect of life where improved learning and clearer thinking will enhance human performance.

He categorises the types of lines, suggesting all of the below follow a line format.

– Gesturing

– Walking

– Weaving

– Observing

– Singing

– Story-telling

– Drawing

– Writing

These ‘all proceed along lines’

Line is the most important element of making art. He suggested that It is not about materials or textures – it is the notation which matters. Human beings have always experienced the earth by walking on it, leaving traces of their paths. He likes to follow unending road lines to see where they will take him.

Richard Long’s practice of creating lines and circles by walking involves his body, scratching his presence on the earth. His interventions are not permanent; his materials – stones, mud and the imprints of his footsteps – will eventually be absorbed by the environment.

Lines and circles are primitive expressions of man’s relation to the earth. Where the lines mark our journey the circle is often invisible, creating a protective boundary of chanted prayers, which can be blown away by the slightest breeze.

Long has commented about A line made by walking (1967) :

Nature has always been recorded by artists, from prehistoric cave paintings to twentieth-century landscape photography. I too wanted to make nature the subject of my work, but in new ways. I started working outside using natural materials like grass and water, and this evolved into the idea of making a sculpture by walking … My first work made by walking, in 1967, was a straight line in a grass field, which was also my own path, going ‘nowhere’. In the subsequent early map works, recording very simple but precise walks on Exmoor and Dartmoor, my intention was to make a new art which was also a new way of walking: walking as art.
(Tufnell 2007, p.39.)

Especially I remembered Richard Long (1967)’s a line made by walking in the lecture. My individual mapping from home to university was made by tracing my journey and using a line.